Definition
An archaic Latin adverb from old English law meaning "severally" or "separately." The term appears in medieval legal texts to indicate that persons, obligations, or interests are held or treated individually and distinctly rather than jointly. Where divtsim applied, each party's liability, right, or obligation stood alone, independent of the others.
Why It Matters in Research
This term will surface almost exclusively in medieval and early common law sources, particularly in Bracton and materials derived from it. Researchers encountering divtsim in manuscript or transcribed texts should treat it as a signal that the passage concerns the severability of obligations or the separate treatment of co-parties — a distinction with significant legal consequences in the context of joint tenancy, co-obligors, and pleading.
The practical trap: because divtsim is not carried forward into modern legal vocabulary, researchers working backward from a modern doctrine of several liability may not recognize its historical expression in primary sources. The conceptual thread is continuous even when the Latin label disappears. By the late medieval period, English legal writing increasingly replaced Latin adverbial forms like this one with English equivalents ("severally," "apart," "separately"), so the same doctrinal content appears under different surface language depending on the era of the source.
Bracton's folio 47, the sole cited locus in the Black's supplemental entry, addresses property and obligation contexts in which the law distinguishes joint from several treatment of parties. Researchers working on the history of joint and several liability, co-tenancy doctrine, or the evolution of pleading rules should consult that passage directly.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) Supplemental is the only historical dictionary source to include this term, and its entry is minimal: a single-sentence gloss ("Severally; separately") with a citation to Bracton, fol. 47. No expansion or doctrinal elaboration is offered. The entry exists essentially as a finding aid — confirming the term's meaning for a researcher who has already encountered it in a primary source, rather than situating it within a broader legal framework.
The absence of divtsim from standard editions of Black's main text and from other historical dictionaries (Bouvier, Burrill, Jacob) suggests it was recognized as a narrow, source-specific term rather than a term of general legal art. This is consistent with its character as a Latin adverb drawn from Bracton's Latin prose rather than from the more standardized vocabulary of the Year Books or Statutes.
No historical source treats divtsim as having contested meaning or as a term requiring interpretation. Its simplicity is its defining feature.